Hardware-based rendering of full-parallax synthetic holograms

We present a method for efficiently calculating the interference of complex -valued two-dimensional wave patterns that is useful during the generation of synthetic holograms. These patterns are represented as a special kind of images (textures), and the interference is calculated in a computer graphi cs rendering process. This enables us to leverage hardware support for holo graphic imaging that is implemented in many state-of-the-art computer works tations. Using this approach, we gain a speedup of a factor of 60-90 compar ed with conventional calculation methods for interfering wave patterns. Our method is evaluated numerically, examples are shown, and the program code is outlined. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 090.1760, 090 .1970.